The unfortunate point of a business is to get people hooked, kill competition, increase profits through enshitification, declare bankrupcy, sell/close company. The goal is that people up top make tons of money. Reddit is in the enshitification stage. They don't care that people are leaving because the suits are making money.

At some point they l announce that paying for a Reddit premium account allows you to be unbanned and free to do whatever you want.

What other reasons or ideas can you think of, that mass banning users, (some with years of age and contributions, some of them mods.) could be the first step in a plan to capitalize.

To me it seems like it's a consequence of both cost cutting moderators and lowering the threshold for bans to make the plaform more appealing to large companies advertising.

My best guess, is that whatever plan they had, failed. They will have a backup plan, which will also fail, and maybe they will try to cash in by being bought by another social media. Would not surprise me if they sold to X, since that's the direction reddit is going.

If we're truing to look into some sort of conspiracy here, I would propose another one.

Reddit is at the forefront of "dead Internet". Now being a paid data provider for AI scrapers, it's in Reddit's interest to generate as much data as possible at as little expense (i.e. servicing actual users) as possible.

At the same time, they need to show that data is user-generated, so they keep registering users - they just ban them later under any made up reason to not spend resources on them.

As a result - data flows, users think being banned is their fault, and no one can prove for sure Reddit is a dead trove of AI data, providing them with plausible deniability to keep on going and racking profits for minimal expense.

My theory is that Reddit is being run incompetently, without good strategy. The problem is it’s too big to fail so whatever it does seems mysterious only

Spez has been laser focused on trying to make reddit profitable

His actions speak like he hired some kind of machiavellian ham fisted axe wielding corporate consultants to make that happen

...but at the same time, Spez also want to fully control the main political narrative on Reddit as another revenue stream

you know bain capital and toys r us?

basically that

In /r/privacy they started implementing the new social credit system where not only do you need karma, you need fresh karma, called a "Contributor Quantity Score." So my usual aged, pop in every few months account with decent karma is effectively banned for being (actual term) "lowest value" because I'm not on Reddit commenting every day.

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/19023371170196-What-is-the-Contributor-Quality-Score

As for their plans, seems like a probability where they just want us to pay $5.99 a month to make the problem (they created) go away.

Same as Facebook and Google. Sell all the data they collect on you to whoever will buy it. It’s advertising start to finish, top to bottom.

And, whatever isn’t advertising is part of the surveillance state. Palantir and Peter Theil get to look over your colonoscopy results while they decide whether or not your social credit score has fallen low enough to revoke your citizenship.

The plan? Enshittification.

It's the same phenomenon as every company that is publicly owned (or aspiring to be)--their only concern is the apparent value of the company. Not the value or quality of the actual product or service, just the stock market value.

Stock market values are based on profitability. There are two ways to increase profitability: increase revenue, and decrease costs. Increasing revenue is hard, especially with social media companies (they cost a lot for how much ad revenue brings in, which is partly why they all sell your data--to increase revenue).

Decreasing costs in the short term is much easier. Fire 25% of the staff, you've just increased profitability by a huge margin, and you get a raise. But wouldn't that lower the quality of the product? Naw, we'll just replace people with AI, who will do a perfectly adequate job. Besides, who the hell cares? It's not like the product matters, it's the numbers!

It's called enshittification.

I got ridiculed for talking about how you have to keep a conveyor belt of multiple accounts baking and ready to go (age, karma, post history). A thing that was once normally accepted mode of operation on reddit. Now the perspective has inverted. Reddit has managed to pivot itselt 180 degrees to a different class of internet user. They are totally naive though just as self-righteous as older reddit users.

Apparently now that MO is considered chronically online basement dweller behavior. I know it's not that deep. The newer reddit users are largely there for low brow entertainment. Including harassment/mockery/ridicule of any reddit user they find that is different from them.

They use reddit by scrolling their phone chasing dopamine hits. It's reddits version of the slot machine mechanics that just about every facet of the tech world has been implementing in their own way.

As for the "why was I banned" shenanigans. I think it's mostly automated trip wires every where. It's rats nest of it. Second to that is bad actors gaming it. That's a whole rant in itself.

The newer reddit users are technologically illiterate. They have no idea about bans or shadow bans. They'll keep engaging even though their activity is going into a shadowban blackhole.

Good question. Reddit PERMANENTLY BANNED me for these two words: Punch her.

Context? A woman was frustrated with her landlady for fining her $50 for trash that wasn’t trash but was an Amazon package at her apartment door. The advice I gave? Punch her.

Reddit is pure AI slop now, it has to be.

Nah. Powertripping mods explain bans.

Even here on Lemmy you heard about unjustified bans all the time.

I’ve been working to delete all my stuff on a banned Reddit account before I delete it. Most of my accounts are done except for two. One I can’t get into for some reason. The other is my main and it keeps lying about or hiding my posts so I can’t get to all of them and delete them. I have tampermonkey scripts that have been running for days and there’s STILL shit that keeps reappearing after reddit pretends to delete it.

You don’t get to keep my content AND ban me from using your platform. I’ll just keep whacking away at it until it’s dead but fuck it’s this a needlessly complicated pain in the ass.

Charging people to be unbanned would not be a smart move.

They're just incompetent, there's no conspiracy.

Do you know how use of AI changes how you think? They want to train people on AIs.

I have yet to see an "idk why I was banned" that wasn't either blatant bad-faith engagement or flat out lying about the event. I don't think that actually happens very often at all.

white supramacy, federal agents

I was ready to quit Reddit before I got banned. Honestly it was a welcomed divorce.